6 Ways of Unpinning a Butterfly
by Serious Black
Summary: [REPOST. Post GoF, Cho POV] In which Cho Chang denies she is in denial, but cops to the occasional cig in the Prefects' bathroom. Also: Harry Potter's untied trainers, Weili Chang (age 6), and The Day It Started Getting Better.


6 WAYS OF UNPINNING A BUTTERFLY   
  
by Serious Black  
  
1. IMAGINING BACKWARDS  
  
I prefer to think of him as my Ex-Boyfriend.  
  
Is that wrong? I mean, I don't do it to be disrespectful, or out of denial. And it's not as if I didn't really, really like him. The opposite is true: I liked him too much. I liked him so much that if I stopped and actually thought about it--about how he'll never whistle or smile or run his fingers over the skin just below my ear again--I might start to break things, to bang my fists on the wall and scream.   
  
Because it's all so bloody unfair, isn't it. It's the unfairness of it that drives me mad. And the simplicity as well. It's too simple to comprehend: (1)I met him; (2)I liked him more every day; (3)there were no more days. The End. See what I mean? Total absence is big and impossible, like trying to imagine backwards to the start of time, the start of everything. You can feel your sanity start to slide.   
  
So I just don't let myself go there. When I hear a voice that sounds like his, or see a raincloud the colour of his eyes, I cook a crepe for my little sister Weili. I paint my toenails. I iterate an algorithm. I send an owl to Angelina or Roger. I sit down and put my head between my knees, like my mother taught me to do when I was little and got sick from traveling by floo. I count to fifty, looking at the rubber peeling off the toe of my trainer.  
  
Always, after a few minutes, it gets easy again. Easy to think of him as another cute guy I used to see, nobody special. Only an Ex-Boyfriend. Instead of....   
  
You know.   
  
Instead of an Ex-Person.   
  
2. WHAT I LOVE ABOUT QUIDDITCH.  
  
It doesn't matter if you're a girl, or short, or from a family that isn't pureblooded. It doesn't matter if you're poor. It doesn't matter if your House gets much attention or not. Everybody is equal in the air.  
  
Watching how other people fly: Like a ballet, only with more broken bones.  
  
Vertigo. A certain feeling, sometimes, that you're falling up, away from the earth and from everyone's attention, everyone's claims on you.   
  
Knowing that your only responsibilities--for a few sweet minutes--are to play fair and win.  
  
The feel of the blue robes on your skin, not soft and clean from the wash but stiff, cold from the wind and dawn mist curling off the pitch.  
  
The speed. The rush. The chase. The way it makes you wonder about boys. About how it will feel someday, when you're grown and ready and not confused or afraid any longer.   
  
3. HARRY (I).  
  
Harry Potter has been acting weird this year.   
  
Well. Weirder than usual, I mean.   
  
Hey, don't get me wrong, I know Harry is good, great even. I like what I've seen of him, anyway (we're not really close). He looks out for his friends. His smiles are...hmm. Like waking up to fresh snow outside your window. Oh, and he hasn't let that whole Saviour Of the Wizarding World bit turn him into an ass. Which is refreshing. And of course he's deadly on a broomstick.  
  
When he's around me, though, it's all blushes and gawks. He can barely stammer out a simple greeting. I know I'm supposed to feel flattered or powerful--with anyone else I guess I would--but somehow Harry's nervousness makes me nervous. It kind of irritates me, to tell the truth. Like, here's this famous hero who fights dragons and saves people's lives, but he can hardly work up the nerve to talk to a girl, and what is that about?  
  
I have this fantasy where he comes up to me, all shy and pink about the cheeks the way he gets, and says Hullo, his voice sweet like a little boy's, and I gently take him by the shoulders and shout PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, YOU SAD PRAT!  
  
Oh, don't look at me like that. I wouldn't actually do it.   
  
It's just...weakness doesn't become him. That's not how he really is. Do you understand? The Harry who bites his lip and slops water down his front when I look at him--who has me up on some pretty princess pedestal--is not the true Harry.  
  
It can't be. If he were just an ordinary boy, how could he have done what he did on the night of the third task? And what about all the other amazing things? He collects them like butterflies. I don't believe in miracles, but I don't believe in coincidences, either.   
  
My Ha-bu, before she died, taught me that we make our own good luck. She painted images of lucky animals in oil and watercolour. She threw pots and sewed silk cushions with herbs inside for prosperity. She also knew how to cast the I Ching: but after, she would just tickle my chin with the stalks of yarrow and refuse to tell me what she'd read. That made me so mad when I was little! I would stomp my foot and cry, How will I keep away from bad luck if I don't know it's coming? And she said: Cho-ah, it's not your responsibility to know. Just be who you are, look bad luck in the eye when it comes.  
  
  
  
Well, it's bloody come now, all right, hasn't it? And I'm doing my best to stand up straight and look it in the eye, but it's hard. It's so hard when the bravest person I know--the person who has stared down more bad luck in fifteen years than most wizards do in a lifetime--can't even bear to look me in the eye anymore.   
  
It's true: Nothing is the same this year. Harry won't say hello in the corridors. Not so much as a passing glance, no hint of a blush. He just slouches by, staring at the floor, following his feet like he doesn't care where they take him. The air around him is flat grey; he's fading into it.  
  
And sometimes Cedric shines so bright against the blue velvet of my bedcurtain that I can't breathe. I can't look. When I open my eyes again he's gone. But there's an afterimage, an imprint of light he leaves behind, making me wonder: Which one died that night, really, and which one lived? It's getting harder and harder to tell.   
  
4. DEAR CHO,  
  
How are you. I am good. I grew five cm that is quite alot!!! Mum said I will be bigger than you. Can I try on your robes over holidays when you come home? The Quidich ones not the black.   
  
Peanut says hi.  
  
On Monday I hit Gerry and got Time Out. I am not sorry. Daddy said to tell him I'm sorry Gerry but Im not sorry. He can't be my boyfriend. I told him. I like him though, don't tell anyone, its a secret!!   
  
Here is a picture do You like it? I painted me and Gerry. Under the rainbow is a sheep, you can count sheeps at bedtime. Then you wont cry in your sleep anymore and have sad dreams. Don't cry Cho. I had a bad dream too but then Daddy came in.   
  
I miss you. Come home soon. When can I go to Hogwarts and play Quidich like you.   
  
Love from  
  
Weili Chang, Age 6  
  
5. HARRY (II).  
  
Weili has a book called "I Was So Mad". The title says it all. It's brilliant, I read it to her every night when I'm home.  
  
I'm not home right now. I'm in front of the Gryffindor changing room, waiting for Harry to come out while I replay the last few moments of the match in my head, over and over and....  
  
Shouts from our end of the pitch. Roger taking a bludger to the shoulder while I streaked by after the Snitch. Go! Go! Go! That instant, Harry and I frozen in space, eyes fixed not on the equidistance of the Snitch but on each other.  
  
The red of his cheeks. The chilly smoothness of gold metal beneath my fingers.   
  
And then--nothing. Madam Hooch's whistle, a lot of noise coming from somewhere nearby. I looked at the tiny ball struggling against my palm. I looked at his back as he sped down and away.  
  
I was so mad.  
  
In fact, I'm so mad still that I don't even notice him walking out of the changing room. It's his shoes I see first, pointed towards me. The laces on one trainer are coming untied; they straggle over the floor as he lifts a foot to scratch the back of his other ankle.   
  
Hi, Cho.  
  
Hi, Harry.  
  
Good game.  
  
I don't know about that.  
  
Well. Um. I need to go n--  
  
No, you need to stay here.  
  
What?  
  
You need to stay here and talk to me about this.  
  
About what?  
  
You know what. You know what happened out there.  
  
No, I...  
  
Yes. Don't lie to me. You let me catch the Snitch. You let us win.  
  
I...  
  
Why did you do that, Harry? Did you think I'd be happy?   
  
. . . .  
  
Or maybe you just pity me, is that it? ...WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?  
  
I don't know what I-I...  
  
Come on, look me in the eye and tell me why you let me win. Tell me...Why won't you look at me? Look at me, Harry!  
  
I can't.  
  
...You...what?  
  
Don't you understand, I can't.  
  
No, I don't understand. Tell me.  
  
. . . .   
  
Oh, Harry. Harry. No.  
  
. . . .   
  
You--oh. my god. This is what you wanted, isn't it? You knew I'd be mad. You wanted to hear me say it. You wanted me to blame you, to...hate you...because...this isn't about the match at all, is it...?  
  
. . . .I'm sorry   
  
Shhh. Stop. It's all right.   
  
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry  
  
Harry, stop. Please stop.   
  
I'm so sorry Cho-  
  
Please...let me think for a moment...Harry, I don't know what to say.  
  
...I just...  
  
If I let you talk now, you're going to tell me it's all your fault, aren't you?  
  
But isn't it?  
  
You know it isn't. It couldn't be.  
  
But what if it is my fault, Cho?   
  
...I just don't know what to say. I...God, I'm so tired. This is not fair. It's not fair, I didn't wake up this morning knowing I'd have to do this today.  
  
I was just thinking that too. I didn't know either.  
  
Are you really ready to talk about this stuff?  
  
...No, I guess not. I'm tired too.  
  
. . . .   
  
. . . .   
  
Are you okay now?  
  
Yes. Yeah, I think so.  
  
I want to tell you something, all right, Harry?  
  
Um. Yeah.  
  
He never took me seriously on the Quidditch pitch.  
  
What?  
  
He never really thought of me as another Seeker. He never said so, but I could always tell--it wasn't like when he played Malfoy. Or you. There was something patronising in the way he'd congratulate me. No matter how a match came out, I was always fifty-one percent girl and forty-nine percent Seeker. I guess it was just the way he was raised, or something.   
  
Did that bother you?  
  
Well yeah, it bothered, like, forty-nine percent of me.  
  
Why are you telling me this?  
  
One time, I heard you tell Ron Weasley how stupid it was that people thought you were so brilliant just for being alive.  
  
It is.  
  
So. My point is, Isn't it just as stupid to consider someone brilliant just because he's dead? Believe me, he was far from perfect.   
  
He...didn't believe me when I told him I didn't put my name in the Goblet.  
  
He barely had any sense of humour.  
  
He ruffled my hair one time, like I was a little kid.  
  
He was always three minutes late meeting me.  
  
He was always falling over and tripping.  
  
He always said "eck-cetera."  
  
He rubbed my nose in it, him asking you to the Ball first. He didn't mean to, but he did.  
  
Awful, that.  
  
It was awful.   
  
Altogether he wasn't so great, now I'm remembering.   
  
Nah. We're better off without him, aren't we, Cho.  
  
....Oh yeah. Yeah, loads better.  
  
....Yeah.  
  
  
  
6. LANDING  
  
I've never been a big rule-breaker...the occasional fag in the Prefect's bathroom, that's about it. If you want to hear about the one major thing I do that I'm not allowed, here it is:  
  
On the edge of the school grounds there's a forest. A bit into the forest there's an ash tree. The trunk is split in two. Inside the trunk, under a pile of pods like paper keys, I keep a little radio. The radio is made of red plastic. When I have to, I go there to listen to muggle music. I dance or sit or sleep. Sometimes I just lie under the tree and look up through the branches into the sky. Not to imagine anyone up there--just to see the clouds and the blue.  
  
Today, 6:49 PM on the day Harry talked to me, I'm dancing. It's kind of a slow old song, you know the one: "I've sat upon the setting sun/But never never never never/I never wanted water once/No never never never..." The song is so good, I can't believe how right it is, I can't believe how clear and gold the guitar--it's like that. And my arms are coming up, and I'm spinning slowly on my toes, eyes closed. I hear an owl land in the branches above.   
  
Don't you think that's the definition of Grief? Absence of flight, I mean. Everyone can fly, more or less: it's the landing that breaks our hearts.   
  
[A/N: "I Was So Mad" is one of those Mercer Mayer Little Critters books, and it really is brilliant. Cho is dancing to "The Wind" by Cat Stevens, one of my favorite songs.] 


End file.
